We took 2 escorts to the Targa Bunbury Rallysprint last weekend, the Orange Mk2 and my original pinto Mk1.

After Targa South West we found a lot wrong with the Mk2. Both tailshaft uni's were stuffed which explains the drive train vibration. Also the rear right wheel bearing had failed which explains the excessive knock off on the rear brakes. To make matters worse when we pulled the shafts we had also twisted one of the splines. Anyhow it was all back together 4 days prior to the event.

I was hoping to take the new Duratec Mk1 but had a bit of an engine scare on the Friday morning prior to the event which saw me bolting all the good bits back onto the old Mk1 and recommissioning that for the event. I must admit driving that car seems so much more natural.

Can i ask how hard the roof change on red coupe was, have sunroof in a 2 door here and was wanting to swap roofs off a wreck i have here also but panel beaters here want more than what it will cost for new rolling shell to do it

The roof was very time consuming. Basically I cut through the 6 pillars and inverted then found the factory brazed joint lines and started to separate around them. I kept the front and rear braces on the roof and unpicked the sides. Due the the LHS of the car being a bit mangled we kept the gutter intact with the roof that side and then drilled through both skins and spot welded back onto the rally shell. I did unpick all the spot welds on the RHS gutter which made a mess of the skin and didn't leave much meat to re-weld with. I have spoken to someone else since who said they sectioned the gutter every 200mm and joined back together that way.

I'm currently removing a sunroof on another shell and have simply glued an alloy panel into the void and will skim with bog to make good, which is obviously much easier.

Here is another action picture of Geoff. He's still trying to drive the car like it's on gravel, and this event was the first time he was on brand new Toyo 888s which gripped up nicely. On the in-car you can see him give the hand brake a tweak on the entry to this left hander which was on a crest and off-camber: